


Selfish Ends

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Suicide Attempt, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:11:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Benjamin's journey back to David Shepherd.  (Takes place intermittently during and after s1 of Kings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Selfish Ends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Destina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/gifts).



> Hello, all of your prompts were awesome and you are such a worthy recipient! Happy Yule!
> 
> A note on warnings: the dubcon in tags is in reference to Jack's relationship with Lucinda and it's not explicit. In case anyone is worried, no one dies in the duration of this fic (because that would be really mean and anti-Yule).
> 
> The opening quote is from a 14th century rabbinical text commenting on the Biblical relationship between David and Jonathan.
> 
> ~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o~

_Love that is not dependent on selfish ends is true love of the other person since there is no intended end._

\- Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran, _Magen Avot_

***

Gath is arid. Gath is parched. It is a bone-dry, waterless, barren desert.

Until Jack finally sets his eyes on him - his golden King, David Shepherd - and the dusty landscapes of Gath suddenly burst forth in lush, dripping greenery.

David clasps Jack’s arms with his life-saving hands, his beryl mineral eyes skate over Jack’s drawn features and he says, “Welcome, brother,” and all the past months of captivity and self-hatred temporarily melt away.

***

Thomasina was wrong. It isn’t Joseph’s face Jack pictures when he closes his eyes. Why defile his dearly departed like that? No. Joseph was pure, he was good, and Jack wouldn’t disgrace his memory by picturing him while he couples with his… _Lucinda_. Good _God_ , it’s unbearable. Her sad, dutiful, doe-like eyes, looking at him with such hope, such expectation. He feels like vomiting. And when he finally does close his eyes, it is David’s face that he sees.

It seems fitting. The last time he felt nausea like this, this sort of confusion, the tugging at his gut and gravity of opposing forces, had been when he held his gun on David in front of Belial. Jack doesn’t know what it’s like to talk to God, definitely not what it’s like to hear God answer back, but at that moment, perhaps, he might have come close. He hadn’t pulled the trigger and then he wanted to retch.

He doesn’t want to touch Lucinda, but he also doesn’t want to hurt her. None of this is her fault; she is blameless in God’s eyes and Jack’s. She is, after all, “a vessel for the propagation of his kind,” her only mistake was knowingly accepting this responsibility. But she deserves a husband who is at least not disgusted by the thought of her touch. This touch, which ironically might be the only thing to set them both free.

He closes his eyes and thinks of David. David, with his halo of golden curls, who seems a burnished idol and radiant like the sun even while covered in mud. David, who saved him, and whom he had in turn saved from his father’s wrath. David, who looks more handsome in his uniform than any man should have a right to. He is everything that Jack could never be - he would’ve made Silas proud, and yet, he too is an exile.

God doesn’t speak to Jack in those moments either, but he thinks he might hear his voice on the edge of sleep, as quiet tears are shed into his pillow, and Lucinda’s steady breath warms the night air around him, he thinks he might hear a whisper, a small scratching at the very base of his skull. _Your fates are indelibly linked_ , the voice says.

***

“Words don’t settle debt,” Jack says to David, when they’re back after the whole misadventure in Gath. After his father embraces them both and tells them to _love each other_. Like brothers. He means like brothers. _Perhaps, brothers after all_ , Belial’s cynical words echo in his head.

Poor Shepherd, he actually looks as innocent as he’d have Jack believe he is, even though he’s pretty sure he’s boning his sister. Or if he isn’t, then it’s only a matter of time until he does. In the battle between God and Cock, the cock often wins, and Jack would know.

“Then don’t speak to me in words,” David replies.

Their lips meet for only a moment until Jack remembers himself.

“He might yet love you as a son. It is too late for me.” He rises but David’s hand is on his sleeve, those clear eyes asking him not to go. “Don’t _be_ this, Shepherd.”

He doesn’t know why he walks away. It would’ve been easier to take and defile the cherub at his feet. That _act_ would’ve removed this obstacle in his father’s eyes as surely as a bullet. He thinks, perhaps, he might have heard God’s voice then too. But he sends David away, away into Michelle’s arms, where it’s safer for both of them.

***

Once Lucinda is finally pregnant, he can play devoted husband to her without performing that odious task again. He can take a breath and try to figure his way out of this tomb. For, have no doubt, it is exactly like being buried alive. It is, after all, as Silas wanted - a living death for him. Jack looks at himself in the mirror and doesn’t recognize the man he sees. Breathing fails him. He hasn’t shaved in weeks. Not since it was confirmed that his royal sperm had successfully inseminated the regal receptacle of Lucinda’s uterus.

Rose is resplendent on her visits: all black lace and Chanel. She averts her eyes from his sunken, hirsute face, and speaks only to his wife’s barely tumescent belly. Rose brings newspapers for him to read (which is how he knows that Shepherd is still alive and well, in Gath), but will not speak to him of either his father or his sister. The papers are quiet about Michelle.

He used to think that once the deed was done, they would at least let Lucinda leave, but that hasn’t been the case. He used to think, Silas might mellow, might change his mind, or at the very least, agree to let Jack die.

“You said I couldn't be what I was, God said I couldn't be what I wanted, there's nothing left for me but to die.”

These words once spoken to his father in a moment of utter defeat still seem applicable. And there’s a mirror in the bathroom, which means he can still add yet another act that is intolerable in God’s eyes to his already impressive litany of misdeeds. He uses the marble soap dish to smash the glass.

“Jack?”

Lucinda’s voice carries from the edge of slumber.

“I dropped something, love.” The term of endearment dripping past his lips like poison. “Go back to sleep.”

In the restored silence of his prison, Jack rolls up his sleeve and turns on the taps. There’s still a way to flee this gilded cage. He closes his eyes and tries to summon Joseph’s face to his aid as he makes the first cut with the broken glass.

Instead, he sees David again. David with his eyelids at half mast, lips swollen from being kissed, David’s fingers tangled in the lapels of his coat. _Don’t do this. Come to me._

When he opens his eyes, there is a monarch butterfly perched at the very top of the bathroom mirror. _God wants him to live._

It’s easy to wake up Lucinda again. She rubs sleep from her eyes only to find her hands splattered with his blood. There is more blood than damage now, he really knows how to put on a good show as he smears his crimson-stained hands down her nightgown and collapses at the foot of the bed.

“Help! The prince has killed himself!”

Her cry is as ridiculous as it is gut-wrenching. He keeps his eyes shut until the guard is hovering above him. And then the guard’s own gun is in Jack’s hand, a single swift hit to the temple follows. He shoots the second man in the knee. He wants to cause pain, but these were his men once, and might be again one day, and he doesn’t actually want to head down this new path with more blood on his hands that isn’t his own.

“Jack!” he hears Lucinda’s cries in the distance as he races down the corridor, but he makes his heart deaf to her pleas. She’ll be better off without him anyways. He is setting her free, too.

“Jack, don’t do this.” Thomasina stands in his way, like the scepter of his father’s vengeance. She is Cerberus at the gates of the Underworld, the beloved and familiar lines of her stern yet beautiful face more powerful than a hundred rifles pointing at his chest.

“Take care of my son, Thomasina,” he says as he presses the barrel of his gun against her temple and uses her as a human shield until he makes his escape.

***

Back in Gath, David’s fingers run over Jack’s mangled wrist and his brow is furrowed in sorrow. Jack can tell he doesn’t frown in anger, or in judgment, for that is not David’s way.

“You did this to yourself,” David states, not questioning.

“It was a means to an end. It was what brought me here.”

“So you didn’t actually want to…”

“I did, at first. But then I heard God’s voice.”

David seems heartened by this statement, a smile of purest bliss gracing his features, as if he’s proud of Jack. As if he knew all along that Jack would be worthy of hearing God’s voice too. “And what did God say?”

“He said, ‘Go to your brother David, and love him as you would yourself.’”

“You make God sound like a bit of a perv,” David’s smile is suddenly shy and his grip around Jack’s wrist tightens. “Don’t leave me again, Jack.”

“Never,” he swears, and knows in his heart of hearts that he speaks truth.

When their lips meet again, this time it’s without hesitation. David’s hands are firm but gentle, pressed against Jack’s waist as he pulls him closer.

“What about what God wants?” Jack whispers into David’s mouth.

“God brought you here, didn’t he?”

When Jack looks up, it is to see David’s image as it came to him in his prison, lips swollen from Jack’s kisses and begging for more. His head falls back, ceding an easy path for Jack’s lips to beat to his neck, Jack’s mouth hot and voracious as he kisses that exposed, soft skin, and marks it for all of Gath and Gilboa to see.

Jack had been a selfish lover in the past, taking what he wanted with little thought of reciprocation, but not this time. Because words don’t settle debt and he has more than one debt to settle with David Shepherd. He’s lost track of how many times now he owes David his life. And so he loses himself in his body as well, where every touch turns to benediction and every kiss seals an unspoken vow.

“I know you love my sister,” Jack says, as they lie next to each other after, their legs still intertwined. David’s golden head of sweat-soaked curls rests on Jack’s chest, as his fingers slowly draw circles around the aureola of the prince's nipples. Jack’s body and soul both feel as light as air, so bringing up Michelle just feels like the next logical step in his unburdening.

“I loved you first, and would’ve been yours had you not been so dead set on hating me.” David looks up and places a kiss right onto Jack’s chin dimple.

“It wasn’t you I hated. I hated that _he_ had loved you.” He knows now that it’s true. He knows that had Silas only loved Jack as a father should, Jack would’ve had enough love then for David, and even some left over for himself, perhaps.

“A jealous love that quickly turned to hate,” David speaks as his lips trace patterns on Jack’s neck and his collarbones. “The kind I would never feel for you. My Prince.”

“Nor I for you.” Jack kisses the top of David’s head as it slips lower. “So, we’ll find her, David. Together, we’ll find her.”

Jack’s breath catches in his throat at David’s touch and he has to avert his eyes because he can’t quite stand the way David is looking up at him. God may not have graced him with a butterfly crown of his own, or sat him upon his father’s throne, but he had given him something much more invaluable. A love free of selfish ends.


End file.
